Janine Marsh, the editor behind The Good Life France, has been on the road along the French Riviera — writing her latest newsletter from Antibes, freshly arrived from a few days of eating her way around Nice, with a trip to Cognac next on the itinerary to explore the famous spirit from some less-than-obvious angles. She's been documenting it all on Instagram as she goes, with full write-ups promised in a future issue of The Good Life France Magazine.
Nice is the standout food stop in this instalment. The trip focused on the city's gastronomy — its markets, its savoury specialities and, notably, its chocolate — which fits neatly with a city whose old town is essentially one long eating opportunity: socca, pissaladière, tourte de blettes and confiture stalls all within a few cobbled streets of each other. From there it's an easy hop along the coast to Antibes, the old-town-meets-superyacht town between Nice and Cannes, where Janine is sending this week's letter from.
But the newsletter is as much about the life behind the travel as the travel itself. Writing from her home in rural northern France, Janine marks 22 years since she traded a London commute, high heels and a briefcase for dungarees, rubber boots and a menagerie — this week's household news involves four rescued feral chickens who have settled in with alarming confidence and now expect to be waited on.
The heart of the letter is her neighbour Claudette, who turns 96 next year and, as Janine puts it, was horrified to discover that a grown woman could arrive in the French countryside unable to cook. In an isolated spot with no takeaway options and no corner shop, cooking from scratch isn't a hobby — it's a survival skill. Over two decades Claudette and other neighbours have taught her soups, pies, tarts, preserving fruit and vegetables, and the essential village art of assembling a tray of canapés for aperitifs. Claudette's guiding philosophy: cooking is love made edible. Janine plans to test that by cooking Nice-inspired dishes for her mentor when she gets home.
Why should a traveller care? Because this is the kind of first-hand, on-the-ground France that guidebooks skip. The newsletter is a running diary of real trips — Nice's food scene now, Cognac's distilleries next — told by someone who actually lives in the country, and it's free to subscribe to. If you're plotting a Riviera trip or a food-focused France itinerary, her route (Nice for gastronomy, Antibes for the coast, Cognac for something stronger) is a tidy template. Her house-to-home story, meanwhile, is a good reminder that rural France rewards slower travel: eat where the locals eat, learn the aperitif ritual, and expect any village skill to come with a strong-willed neighbour attached.
The Good Life France newsletter goes out weekly, mixing destination inspiration with musings from the French countryside and occasional subscriber giveaways.
